Friday, April 21, 2017

The Aqua Tunic

This tunic started out as a slim fitting men's shirt. I loved the color and small checks. If you notice in the before picture that the shirt is hanging from tree branches, it's because we were camping when I did this refashion. Yes, I brought my sewing machine camping! I have to admit, though, after years of tent camping, we now enjoy "glamping" in a travel trailer.

I removed the collar and the sleeves.

I cut a scoop neck.

After cutting down the width of the shoulder seams, I added a couple of higher darts to the bodice and then reattached the shortened sleeves.

I cut away the button bands on both sides of the shirt front, and then added a 6 1/2" wide piece of white fabric. I then made an inverted pleat at the top.

I finished the neckline with some bias trim cut from the excess sleeve fabric.

I added a few square buttons that mimicked the check in the fabric. To finish the tunic, I cut off some of the length and added a new shirt tail hem.

I'm pleased with the way this one turned out and think it will be a nice summer tunic!

9 comments:

This looks very good and you make it look easy, but what happened to the yolk at the back and shoulder of the shirt? If you cut it off, the shirt doesn't seem to have suffered any shortening. Weren't the armholes openings too low when you cut the sleeves off? The side seams still seem to be well placed and not thrown backwards by the insertion of the pleat, how did you do that?

I love this design. I definitely need to make one. You have such a gift for seeing the potential in clothing items that would normally escape most people's notice. Thanks for posting your projects. I have always found them very inspiring.

To whatthesew...maybe I need to clarify. I didn't remove the back yoke, I only removed the sleeves and narrowed the width of the shoulder seams so that the sleeves would sit at the right placement on my shoulders. The newly cut armholes were a bit gaping, so I added the higher bust dart to eliminate that excess. The slim fit shirt was just that (slim), so by cutting off the button bands and then adding back in the inverted pleat, I was left with the same fit through the bust area since the added pleated fabric was approximately the same measurement as what I cut off, and the extra amount of fabric at the base of the insert gave the tunic more room for movement around the hip area. I hope that makes sense!

Great refashion Susan. Well done!!!You mention that you take the sewing machine camping. You must have a lot of space in your camper! We go camping as well, but the way we do it (just a 4x4 and we also sleep inside) space to store things are an issue.Therese